CarpenterS SOMEDAY anomalie

[Jeff]

Way back at the dawn of the 70's I purchased my 1st copy of the "Ticket To Ride" lp. Upon 1st listen I noticed that at the end of SOMEDAY where the vocals stop and the instruments make the big finish, that the music sounded sort of scratchy and kinda like the equalization was off. I went out and bought another l.p., 8track, cassette, 1st c.d. release, 2nd c.d. release, and the remastered classic c.d. and throughout ALL of these formats the anomalie appears and I'm surprised that it wasn't tweaked to perfection somewhere along the line. Question? have any of the other members experienced this? Also, what is it exactly? The original version of CAN"T SMILE W/O YOU during the chorus when K&R are singing "into the new ...leaving the old behind me" appears to have a kind of strained sound in the mix that the remake doesn't have. These are the only two songs in the whole lot that I've noticed have these little curiosities. Any thoughts?

Jeff

 

[davidgra]

What you're hearing at that spot in "Someday" is distortion on the tape in the track containing the strings. It sounds as if the recording levels were set too high and the track peaked out where that crescendo happens in the string parts.

As for why it was never fixed, that's a mystery to me. I suspect that, since OFFERING was a first album by an unknown band, there was a rather limited budget for recording, and whoever was making decisions decided that it wasn't worth the extra expense to bring the orchestra back and re-record those parts.

Why it wasn't fixed later on is more of a mystery -- Richard has tinkered with so many other tracks that it would seem natural for that one to have been remixed with new orchestra parts added. But the answer to that question may lie in the master tape itself; if the orchestra parts were on the same track(s) as other instruments, it would be much more difficult to re-do one part without re-doing ALL the parts (OFFERING was recorded on only eight tracks, after all).

Since Karen was never satisfied with her performance on that song and got the chance to re-record it in 1980, Richard might also have decided that it wasn't worth all the time and effort to fix a few seconds of tape distortion. Who knows? Someday one of us will have to ask Richard...

David

 

[Harry]

Way back at the dawn of the 70's I purchased my 1st copy of the "Ticket To Ride" lp. Upon 1st listen I noticed that at the end of SOMEDAY where the vocals stop and the instruments make the big finish, that the music sounded sort of scratchy and kinda like the equalization was off. I went out and bought another l.p., 8track, cassette, 1st c.d. release, 2nd c.d. release, and the remastered classic c.d. and throughout ALL of these formats the anomalie appears and I'm surprised that it wasn't tweaked to perfection somewhere along the line. Question? have any of the other members experienced this? Also, what is it exactly?
Jeff

As already answered, it's a case of the orchestra swell overmodulating the tape. Whoever was running the board in the studio wasn't paying attention to the levels and things just got too loud, creating the distortion in the tape we can still hear today. I was in the same boat as you Jeff, buying copy after copy trying to eliminate that distortion, but with no success.

Perhaps we can chalk it up to the newness to producing records on the part of both Richard Carpenter and Jack Daugherty.

Harry
...who's learned to live with that particular distortion, online...